The majority of the posts I have made here, involving the Coventry Charterhouse, have either been about the black and white, "grotesque style", wall painting, or about the private owners and the general history of the property. I haven't said a great deal about the other two main wall paintings - the remains of the Crucifixion painting on the first floor, and the "fictive tapestry" on the top floor.
But a comment in a meeting earlier this week, about the base of the Cross in the Crucifixion painting being rare, reminded me that I had previously read something about this, so sent me scurrying back through the documents.
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| The base of the Cross in the Crucifixion wall painting in the Coventry Charterhouse |
I found the reference I remembered, which was in an article by Pierre Turpin, entitled "Ancient Wall-Paintings in the Charterhouse, Coventry," published in "The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs" in December 1919.
In this, the author discusses details that differ between the Continental style of Crucifixion paintings and the English style:
"Another quite typical detail which shows how far we are from the usual representations of crucifixions in Continental and particularly Italian art, is the appearance of the two steps at the foot of the cross. Usually the cross starts directly from the ground, a disposition allowing for an opening in the soil in order to show the skull of Adam. Thus was indicated the well-known analogy between the Tree of the Cross and the Tree of Knowledge, found everywhere during the Middle Ages in Latin hymns, as well as in early Norman carving of fonts and tympana. In this example the steps seem to point to those stone crosses so frequent in England at cross roads and in churchyards. The steps afforded a place of rest and sometimes served as a pulpit for some friar or occasional preacher. At any rate, such representations of crosses with steps at the base are conspicuous in English brasses and embroideries."
I decided to follow up the mention of embroideries, to see what examples I could find of this English style. But since I don't want to breach any copyrights, I'm only going to share links to the sites I have currently found, rather than any images.
This first appears on an embroidery site that I have followed for some years, "Needle 'n Thread". It is the third image down, in the article, "Ecclesiastical Embroidery for the Triduum" at https://www.needlenthread.com/2026/04/ecclesiastical-embroidery-for-the-triduum.html
[For anyone trying to find the chasuble on the "Abegg-Stiftung" site mentioned by Mary Corbet, I found it on https://abegg-stiftung.ch/en/ausstellung/sammlung - search the page for "Orphrey cross with crucifixion"]
While searching for more information about what an "orphrey cross" was, I came across an example that was sold at auction in 2012, shown online at https://www.bonhams.com/auction/19872/lot/343/a-rare-late-15thearly-16th-century-english-embroidered-orphrey-cross-designed-with-the-crucifixion-of-christ/. Described as "Lot 343 A rare late 15th/early 16th century English embroidered orphrey cross designed with the Crucifixion of Christ", this cross features what would have been a hexagonal base, rather than a square one.
Very similar to the orphrey cross sold by Bonhams was one sold at Sotheby's London in 2005, which appears in the pdf at https://www.samfogg.com/usr/library/documents/main/19092_web.pdf.
I was intrigued to find the Crucifixion embroidery that is featured on the "ICN independent catholic news", from 2022, at https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/44802, since it is described as dating from the early 17th century, ie post dissolution, and a time when, as the text states, "Catholic worship was largely illegal and punishable by heavy fines, imprisonment or worse." [The embroidery also features on the National Museums Scotland site, at https://media.nms.ac.uk/news/national-museums-scotland-acquires-rare-embroidery-and-launches-new-conservation-internships ]
Interestingly, although the Cross of Christ in that embroidery features a square base, the two crosses of the criminals crucified on either side of Christ are shown wedged into the ground, which seems to be similar to the Continental style.
Finally, the V&A site has images of several chasubles, although not all contain embroideries of the Crucifixion, and those that do, don't all show the base of the cross. However, there is a particularly clear cross base in the one at https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O353646/chasuble-unknown/
Less clear is the chasuble at https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O15361/chasuble-unknown/.
But I thought I'd end the embroideries with that one, dating from between 1434-1446, because the original owner, identified through the shields of arms included in the embroidery, was the Duke of Warwick, and Warwickshire was the county that contained the Coventry Charterhouse.
Turning to English brasses, also mentioned by Turpin, I haven't been so successful in finding images. Most of the brasses show representations of the deceased, rather than crosses.
However, I did find a very clear example of the style of cross (although not actually of the Crucifixion), from an incised slab, in a paper by Sally F Badham, called "Status and Salvation: The Design of Medieval English Brasses and Incised Slabs", published in 1995, and available at https://www.academia.edu/10279502/Status_and_Salvation_The_Design_of_Medieval_English_Brasses_and_Incised_Slabs_MBS_Trans_1995_ On page 460, Fig.28, featured in the incised slab to Ralph Wodford, from Ashby Folville, Leicestershire, are two crosses, both with stepped bases.
Badham does mention examples of the crucifixion that appear in Cohen (1973)1, and in Panofsky (1964)2, but those appear to be Continental examples.
Another comment that was made in the meeting was that this stepped style of the base was a representation of the Carthusian motto, "Stat crux dum volvitur orbis", which translates as "The Cross stands firm while the world turns."
If that was the case, one might expect the style to occur in other images relating to the Carthusians, whether in England, or in Europe.
So far, I have found one depiction of "The Crucifixion with a Carthusian Monk", dating from 1460, at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where the cross does seem to have a stone base, although it is buried in a hole in the ground. This image can be found at https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1931.449 . However, there is also another image on the Cleveland Museum of Art site, at https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1964.454. This second image, "Calvary with a Carthusian Monk", dating from 1389–95, shows the cross starting from the ground.
So, given the examples from embroideries as well, is it more likely that the Charterhouse painting just happened to be painted with the English style of Cross?
But whether the Carthusian monks in the Coventry Charterhouse then made a connection between the image and their motto, during their meditations on the Crucifixion, we'll probably never know.
Notes and Sources
1. Cohen (1973): "Metamorphosis of a death symbol; the transi tomb in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance", which is available through the Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/metamorphosisofd0000cohe/mode/2up
2. Panofsky (1964): "Tomb sculpture; four lectures on its changing aspects from ancient Egypt to Bernini", which is also available through the Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/tombsculpturefou00pano/mode/2up
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